Vacuum cleaners are generally divided into two categories. In the United States, the most popular category of vacuum cleaners is upright vacuum cleaners. Generally, upright vacuum cleaners combine a nozzle mounted suction foot with a dirt separator attached to a pivoting handle. Upright vacuum cleaners provide good carpet cleaning and ease of use. Another type of vacuum cleaner, the canister cleaner, provides a separate canister and cleaning nozzle. Canister vacuum cleaners typically provide better suction and stability at the cost of reduced cleaning power and inconvenience of maneuvering the separate canister and cleaning nozzle. The increase in suction power makes canisters effective in powering cleaning tools, but less effective in removing dirt from carpet.
Recently, the trend in upright vacuum cleaners is to incorporate on board tools to provide some of the functionality of a canister in an upright package. While these cleaners provide the increased above the floor cleaning features of functionality of the canister, they lack the stability of the canister platform. Alternately, there have been hybrid units which separate to form a canister cleaner and combine to form a upright cleaner. These machines are undesirable because they are have added complexity yet do not offer any advantage over a conventional upright or canister cleaner other than the ability to switch from one configuration to another and has the distinct disadvantage that the nozzle may not be stored in the same location when it is desired to return to canister mode.
What is needed therefore, is a vacuum cleaner that combines the advantages of upright style vacuum cleaners with the advantages of canister style vacuum cleaners which overcomes the above-mentioned drawbacks.